The Tin Dog, Redux

[preserved_ginger]

Title: The Tin Dog, Redux
Character(s): Mickey
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine; borrowing them a wee while.
A/N: Set during the period between the wall scene in Doomsday and the final good-bye scene at Dårlig ulv Stranden. A Mickey Smith double-drabble.
Summary: He'd thought things would be different now. Boy, did he get that one wrong!

He is forcing himself to hide it – battened it down inside him so that not even a suggestion of it remains on his face or in his voice – because he knows it's selfish, knows that it won't help the broken-hearted woman in front of him, the woman who he is still very much in love with even though he lost her to the Doctor some time ago. The woman who, although she doesn't know it, still holds the power to wound him terribly.

He's hiding his feelings, for her sake; but he'll not be told he cannot feel it, the jealous rage that is so uncharacteristic of him that he's almost ashamed of it.

It's still the Doctor, the blind fury whispers to him, insidious and persuasive; still, after all this, after everything, it's still him she cries for, him she wants, and not me. Not ever me.

He feels sick to his stomach that he's capable of having these thoughts about someone who he considers his friend; he buries himself in trying to help rebuild her, since she's suffering so much.

And it's working, until she mentions that he's whispering to her – and then it all begins again.